


Secrets and Lies

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Family, Father and Son, Gen, Honor, Lies, Loss, Maiming, Shame, Truth, respect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 08:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16740205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Gary confronts his father's secrets and lies.





	Secrets and Lies

**Author's Note:**

> The last in the series "Counting Fingers" and "Touching Swords" but can be enjoyed alone as well.

Secrets and Lies

“Your son wishes to see you at once, Your Grace.” Timon appeared in the doorway to Gareth’s study with a bow. “He says it’s urgent.” 

“Very well.” Resigned, Gareth waved his hand and wondered what mischief his boy had found time to engage in when he should have been performing his duties as a page. “Send him in.” 

Timon vanished from the threshold to be replaced by Gary, who stormed into the room, slammed the door shut behind him, and marched over to Gareth’s desk, where he dumped a thick tome that flung dust into Gareth’s face over the scrolls Gareth had been reviewing for the next day’s council meeting. 

“What is the meaning of this display, boy?” Gareth arched an eyebrow as he slid the scrolls out from under the book before they could be crushed beneath its weight. 

“I was doing some light reading into the last Tusaine war”—Only his son, Gareth thought, would refer to a volume wide as a man’s neck as light reading—“when I found this interesting sentence.” 

Gareth followed his son’s accusing finger to the sentence it pointed to although he knew without having to see it how it would read. It would describe how he had lost his finger in a skirmish fighting to press Tortall’s border farther into Tusaine. It would be damning evidence of his lie to cow a thousand pages about losing his finger during his Ordeal. His secret shame would be exposed to his son who never could stop digging through dusty tomes in libraries to find the truth behind every lie. 

“It states that you lost your finger during the last war the Old King waged against Tusaine, Father,” explained Gary rather superfluously when the words were staring Gareth in the face as much as they were his son. 

“I did.” Gareth’s nostrils twitched as if he were about to sneeze, and he blamed it on the dusty book, not on any guilt he might have felt about lying to his son and all his pages—the lads who trusted him to be their model of knightly honor— over the many years he had been training master. “The truth that I was injured in battle wouldn’t intimidate a fly, so I had to come up with a more impressive story, son.” 

“If you were injured in battle that makes you a war hero, Father.” Gary sounded torn between hurt, baffled frustration and admiration. “Being a war hero is impressive and intimidating enough without creating a lie about the Chamber of the Ordeal.” 

“Being maimed in battle is shameful, lad.” Gareth’s throat was tightening, choking him with the memory of King Jasson’s advice, the best he had ever received from the Old King, as he lay on his sickbed in Tusaine—doubtlessly the constricting sensation was another effect of the dusty volume Gary had deposited on his desk in a temper. “It is proof of a weakness that must be turned into a strength. A lie is how that weakness is turned into a strength. The Old King himself taught me that in the greatest lesson he ever gave me.” 

“If that’s the festering advice he gave you, it’s good the Old King is rotting in the crypts.” Gary snorted, showing as much disdain for his dead superiors as he did his living ones. 

“You’ll respect the dead.” Gareth rose to grab his son’s shoulders. He didn’t even have to shake them for his boy to know he was serious as the grave where the Old King was buried. “You’ll also keep my secret to preserve the honor of our family name.” 

“Stay silent about your lie, you mean?” Gary’s jaw was clenched mulishly. 

“Call it whatever you like, son.” Gareth’s lips thinned. “The bottom line is that you’ll do it for the Naxen name.” 

“I’ll keep your secret and stay silent about your lie, Father.” The defiant gleam in Gary’s eyes didn’t dim even as he offered this concession, and Gareth was left with the nasty, clawing feeling of having won a battle but lost another adolescent war with his son. “That’s what being a Naxen is all about, keeping secrets and telling lies about minor details like missing fingers, isn’t it?” 

“You’re upset, and that makes you impertinent.” Gareth fought for calm sternness, determined not to match his son’s bitterness with his own. “Go before you say something that will force me to give you a month’s worth of extra etiquette.” 

“Yes, Father.” Gary bent into a short, angry bow before stalking out of Gareth’s study in more of a rage than he had been upon entering. 

Sighing in a vain attempt to release his weariness, Gareth gazed down at his missing finger, feeling a ghostly itch he couldn’t satisfy. Numb in his bones, he reflected on how something as simple and small as a lost finger could reverberate through generations, shaping his relationship with his son by its aching absence.


End file.
